This was originally published on The Stirrer blog – https://thestirrer.net/
As ever with these reports, events always move in a way that will date them pretty quickly. These are just snapshots in time. The thinking is that by linking up these snapshots, a clearer timeline of events will emerge leading to a more comprehensive analysis of what is actually happening. This is not being done as a paper exercise – it’s being done in a bid to better inform our strategy and tactics so we can defeat what’s coming down the line in terms of what can best be described as the great reset.
One major development is the imminent crunch in the care home sector where under rules that demand workers in this sector have to be vaccinated, 32,000 unvaccinated workers face the sack from Thursday 11 November: Mandatory Covid jabs: 32,000 unvaccinated care home workers are facing the sack from Thursday under new rules. One of the boroughs we cover is Thurrock and with 79.6% fully vaccinated, that leaves 20.4% unvaccinated workers who face the sack from Thursday onwards. Losing one in five of the workforce will plunge Thurrock care homes into chaos. A consequence of this will be more beds in hospitals being taken up by elderly and vulnerable people who can’t be discharged into care homes because they will no longer have the capacity to take them. That is only going to exacerbate the normal winter crisis of a mismanaged NHS whose funding and spending priorities have been skewed for years now.
This may explain why mandatory Covid jabs for NHS workers don’t come into force until April 2022: Covid vaccine to be mandatory for all NHS staff in England from April, Sajid Javid announces. Because if they did come into force before the winter, if the 103,000 currently unvaccinated NHS workers were sacked at the same time as the care home workers, the service would be very close to collapse. The decision to delay giving unvaccinated NHS workers the boot is down to political expediency and nothing more. Whatever way you look at the situation, there’s no logic whatsoever behind giving unvaccinated care home workers the boot now while delaying giving unvaccinated NHS workers the boot until the spring. So, you can’t really blame people for thinking there’s a fair bit more to this than supposedly ‘looking after’ our health.
In the UK, outside of England, the extension of vaccine passports to restrict more aspects of life for the unvaccinated continues. On the evening of Tuesday 9 November, the Welsh Senedd voted to extend the coverage of vaccine passports: Senedd votes to extend covid passes to cinemas, theatres and concert halls from November 15. Scotland has a vaccine passport system which to be honest looks like a work in progress with a lot of trial and error involved: Vaccine passport ID checks cost taxpayers millions among spiralling Covid costs. By contrast, the situation in England with vaccine passports is that a number of venues and events have started to implement them but as yet, unlike Scotland and Wales, they’re not mandatory. Don’t for one minute think that England will continue to experience a lighter touch approach to the implementation of vaccine passports. Scotland, Wales and the venues and events in England that have implemented vaccine passports are in effect acting as test beds to see what does and doesn’t work. The intention is to learn the lessons from the inevitable problems that will arise when trying to implement verification technology on this scale and also, attempting to enforce it on the doors.
This is why it’s vital to show solidarity with attempts to resist and frustrate the roll out of vaccine passports in Scotland and Wales. The indications are that already, footfall in hospitality is dropping to the point where a growing number of venues are making losses which in the long run, will be unsustainable. Also, there are reports of hostility and aggression on the doors. In the long run, if venues struggle to find door staff willing to face this week in and week out, then there will inevitably be closures. Obviously, we do not in any way advocate anyone taking out their anger at being denied entry to a venue on the door staff who are doing the job simply because they need money to live. By far and away the better tactics are boycotts and organising underground, alternative events.
Regarding the situation in England, as well as using Scotland and Wales as test beds, the government have obviously seen what happens when there’s any attempt at blanket, draconian implementation of vaccine passports. You only have to look at the street protests and other forms of action in countries such as Italy, France, The Netherlands and Australia to name just a few to see that a draconian approach will provoke a militant response. What’s being tried in England is psychological engineering through nudges and other tactics to get people to update their vaccinations and also, to accept the idea of vaccine passports. Part of what can best be termed psychological warfare is the campaign that’s underway to try and persuade people to get their ‘booster’ jabs in order to ‘save Christmas’: Santa Boris and his Government of Grinches want to cancel Christmas if we don’t all have our booster jabs like good girls and boys – but I won’t be put on the naughty list – Laura Dodsworth | November 9, 2021.
We’ve mentioned this before but it bears repetition… We know a fair number of double jabbed people who have all done their bit with social distancing and masking and…they don’t want the ‘booster’ jabs. They feel the same about vaccine passports. Their view is, ‘we’ve done our bit, leave us alone!’ The government don’t want to leave them or us alone. Expect the psychological manipulation to escalate over the coming weeks and months. Like for example, this seemingly blatant attempt at intimidation by the Health Secretary: Over-65s could be banned from public spaces unless they have Covid booster, suggests Sajid Javid. Once we’d scraped ourselves from the ceiling and thought this through, it’s clear it was a kite flying exercise to test the reaction. The readership of the Telegraph is weighted a bit towards the over 60s. Let’s just say that the reaction on Twitter to the Telegraph’s Tweet about this was almost universally hostile. If the Tory government commit what to all intents and purposes may seem like political suicide by actually implementing this, then be very afraid. Why? Because by doing this, they’re sending out a signal they couldn’t give a toss about the next election because there won’t be one!
A lot of that manipulation is demonising those who for whatever reason, have declined the jab and/or, the ‘booster’. They’re being portrayed as having fallen prey to ‘anti-vaxxers’. What’s worse is that anyone who opposes vaccine passports because of what they could lead to, even though they may well have been double jabbed, they’re getting lumped in with the ‘anti-vaxxers’. These are classic divide and rule tactics – please don’t fall for them. All of this is aided and abetted by an over-compliant media that has pretty much forgotten what investigative journalism is supposed to be about. However, it has to be said that when it comes to divide and rule, there are some anti-Covid vaccine activists who are also stirring things up by saying that those who have had the jabs have compromised their health and in some instances have effectively signed their own death warrants. When we need to unite the un-jabbed and the jabbed against the imposition of vaccine passports, this kind of smearing plays straight into the hands of those who want us divided and at each others throats. Please, don’t fall for this and end up doing the dirty work of the government and the corporations.
Taking a step back, it’s clear the rollout of vaccine passports is going to be a classic case of mission creep. It starts off with concerts and nightclubs, it will be moving onto pubs and restaurants and before you know it, supermarkets. It moves from what people are willing to sacrifice for the sake of principle to what they need to survive. There is undoubtedly a steadily growing awareness among the population at large as to what’s at stake in the medium and long term. The questions is will that awareness translate into widespread, grassroots, militant resistance?
At the moment when you go out and about, most people are doing what they can to get back to some semblance of normality, albeit that we’ll never get back to how things were in 2019 because too much has changed. This is despite the media hyping up the situation with some publications openly calling for Plan B to be implemented. The common thread in this is people’s perception of reality. A perception that can be influenced by the media – if you let it. Our gut feeling is that trust in the media has been declining and a growing number of people are zoning out the doom-mongering and just getting on with their lives as best they can.
There’s a saying which goes like this – ‘the media is the virus’. To some that might sound like conspiracy theory but to us, it makes a lot of sense. The more you look at things, the more it seems like the media will hype some issues, in effect, creating the story. What also needs to be acknowledged is that the media in all of its forms has been dumbed down to the point where serious, balanced coverage of complex issues is a thing of the past. Whether people can see this or not is a moot point.
Let’s take a further step back. A lot of what we’re seeing is pointing towards a fundamental and far reaching agenda of change of which the vaccine passports are just one step in the process. An agenda we outlined in some detail in this post back in October: Situation report – October 2021. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the specifics and details, and to miss out on the bigger picture. While many people are focused on what will happen with vaccine passports in England, when it will happen, and are trying to make sense of what appears to be constant goalpost shifting from the government, a bigger agenda is being played out in the background. Our major headache for many months now has been trying to convince people of this. Our gut feeling is that we’re slowly starting to turn the corner. Our fervent hope is that it’s not a case of too little, too late.